Mr. Chairman, committee members,
thank you for hearing me on Bill C-311.
I would like to raise three points which, I hope, will demonstrate the political and socio-economic importance of the bill, as well as its excellent timing given what is happening in the world today.
For the first point, allow me to be somewhat blunt. In recent years, Canada's abysmal record in the fight against greenhouse gas emissions has had terrible impacts on our international stature as a country. We plummeted from the enviable position of world leader on environmental issues in the early 1990s to a reputation of a foot-dragging crony of the U.S.A.
Now that the U.S.A. and Australia have made a clear about-face, Canada is left in the cold, collecting fossil prizes at each international meeting.
Based on many conferences presented to the general public, let me assure you that this resistance and the resulting international disapproval are insufferable to many Canadians who are genuinely concerned with climate change. Bill C-311 would certainly help rebuild Canada's international stature in the stewardship of the global environment.
Second and perhaps more important, the 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which would be imposed by Bill C-311, would necessarily require a complete and crucial transformation of the Canadian economy. We will have to either buy at great cost or develop ourselves the technology and the infrastructure to shift from an economy rooted in cheap petrol and the gas engine to an economy based on renewable energies and the electric car.
This is the direction that the modern world is taking now. Canada is already losing ground to several countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden, and Denmark, which are taking aggressive measures to wean themselves off fossil fuels. These are countries that will soon dominate the world's economy, thanks to immensely more efficient and competitive industries. For example, it is forecasted that 30% of the one billion vehicles that will roam the planet by 2030 will be hybrid or fully electric cars and will be charged from electric grids powered primarily by solar energy.
Based on the fact that it took about 10 years to replace the horse with the automobile, I personally think and hope that this transformation will take place even faster. How will Canada position itself in this new electro-solar economy? We have the engineering skills and the industrial basis to take some leadership.
For example, researchers at the Institut de recherches en électricité du Québec have just developed a lithium battery that can be recharged at unprecedented rates, thus making possible a wide-autonomy all-electric car.
Are we going to wait for the Americans and the Japanese to develop these new technologies for us, or are we going to encourage the development of our own capacity to wean our society from fossil fuels, thereby fulfilling at the same time our climate responsibilities and making Canada an exporter rather than an importer of this new technology?
The alternative of fossilizing Canada in the fossil fuel-based economy will be suicidal as the era of cheap oil comes to an end. It would lead to the degradation of the Canadian economy that would parallel the decline of the Soviet economies in the second half of the last century. Bill C-311 would certainly force Canada to make the right choice between competitiveness and fossilization.
Third, I would like to stress that the fate of Bill C-311 will hinge to some extent on whether or not at the time of the vote MPs are convinced of the reality of dangerous climate change. Now, like the severed heads of the mythological Hydra, the unbalanced debate on the reality of climate change is perpetually growing back in the media.
For example, just last Friday in his very popular editorial, Mr. Rex Murphy again steered the debate by referring to a BBC report that pointed out that despite rising carbon dioxide levels, global temperatures have not risen over the past 10 years. Mr. Murphy's prose smacked of contempt when assimilating scientists to the zealots of some climate change religion.
It is important to point out that for scientists, the reality of climate warming is not an issue of fate. It's an issue of hard data, hard fact. Like any other citizens, scientists all wish climate change would go away and would no longer threaten our future and that of our children. However, the hard scientific facts are that despite some expected decadal fluctuations, global temperatures are definitely on the rise.
Decadal interludes in rising global temperatures and in the declining trend in Arctic sea ice cover have occurred before, but except for those who crave to disillusion themselves, there is absolutely no basis in the recent data to feel confident that global warming is over with.
While Mr. Murphy puts much confidence in the BBC report written by a journalist, what does he make of the recent warning by U.K. climate scientists that the 2°C warming over the next 40 years—on which the Copenhagen discussions will be based—is overly optimistic and that a 4°C increase must be envisaged instead?
This is what I mean by an unbalanced debate, in which a journalist has more weight than several dozen climate specialists.
My point here is that while the debate on climate change is certainly healthy, Bill C-311 is utterly crucial for Canada's international stature and our economic future—as I tried to explain in my first two points. Hence, MPs ought to base their work on the bill and vote on it based on verified scientific consensus rather than on the flavour of the day in the never-ending debate over climate warming.
Thank you.